Electrify Everything Everywhere For The Climate and Economy - Forbes

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Electrify Everything Everywhere All At Once For The Climate And Economy Michael Barnard Climate futurist advising multi-billion dollar funds and firms Nov 6, 2023

Electric socket with a plug. Connection and disconnection concept. lines, triangles and particle ... [+]GETTY In our future economy, any economic value chain that can go from wind turbines to wires to energy services without going through molecules will win. It will be vastly cheaper. It will be vastly lower carbon. It will be vastly 1

more efficient.

And the degree of electrification that’s possible and probable is likely to astound you. This series will dig through all of the energy requirements of a modern economy and point out the reasons why radical electrification of everything, everywhere, all the time is our future.

Let’s start with an excellent visual, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory energy flows Sankey diagram.

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LLNL Sankey Diagram of US energy flows for 2022 in quadrillions of Btu US LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY Spend a minute looking at this diagram. Most countries in the world have variants of this. The International Energy Agency maintains its own versions for the world. Most of them aren’t as good as the LLNL one. They are eye charts and they understate one of the big problems, rejected energy.

That’s the gray bars and big gray box. That’s energy that comes into the

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economy on the left from coal, nuclear energy, natural gas or renewables and then turns into waste heat that just evaporates into the sky.

In the future, we won’t be doing that. We’ll be making low-carbon electricity only on the left, and getting rid of the big gray bar of rejected energy from burning coal, gas and oil to make electricity. We won’t be making molecules like hydrogen or synthetic natural gas to burn for electricity because that will be vastly less efficient and so much more costly.

We won’t be burning coal, oil or gas for heat. The low-carbon electricity will be used directly for all of our heating and cooling requirements in industry, commercial buildings and our homes. Turning low-carbon electricity into molecules which we then burn for heat doesn’t make economic or environmental sense if there are alternatives, and there are. All of our warmth in the winter, hot water for our baths, fuel to cook our food and high-temperatures for industrial processes will be via direct use of electrons.

We won’t be burning gas or diesel in anything that travels across our roads and rails. Everything that moves around on the ground — cars, pickups, motorcycles, trucks, buses and trains — will be running on electrons too.

Gasoline and diesel engines are incredibly inefficient compared to electric motors, and making synthetic gasoline or diesel throws away a lot of lowcarbon electricity in the process. That means fuel costs will be triple or more if molecules are involved. So they won’t be.

Every boat and ship that isn’t crossing oceans will be running directly on electrons. That’s a remarkable amount of water shipping that’s going to be quieter, much more efficient and less polluting near people. It’s already started, although like a lot of things it’s invisible to most people. A recent example is a pair of 700-container battery powered ships that are sailing a 1,000-kilometer route along China’s Yangtze River.

And every airplane that isn’t crossing oceans will be running on batteries as well. Once again, that’s a lot of passenger kilometers.

In fact, crossing oceans is the only place where there will be molecules 3

required for energy, and we won’t be making those molecules from scratch.

Making hydrogen from low-carbon electricity or natural gas with carbon capture and then combining it with carbon from carbon capture to make synthetic fuels like methanol or e-diesel is a pathway full of rejected energy.

It’s deeply inefficient compared to making biofuels from our rather ridiculous amounts of biological waste, for example, the full third of food that gets landfilled annually, about 2.5 billion tons.

We’ll have the same lifestyle, comfort and economic value we have today, but it will take only about half of the energy to achieve that. Yes, 50% of the energy. For the USA, that means only about six times as much low-carbon electricity as the country already generates annually will power the entire economy. Six times as much wind and solar is pretty easy to achieve in the coming decades, and it will be mostly wind and solar energy.

And so, a new series starts. This one is the radical electrification of everything. Looking back at the Sankey diagram, I’ll be starting at the bottom with transportation. Watch this space.

Follow me on LinkedIn. Michael Barnard Michael Barnard spends his time projecting scenarios for decarbonization 80 years into the future, and assisting his clients — executives, Boards and investors on several continents — to pick wisely today. Whether it's refueling aviation, grid storage, industrial heat, biofuels, iron and steel, vehicle-to-grid, or hydrogen demand, his work is based on the fundamentals of physics, economics and human nature, and informed by the decarbonization requirements and innovations of multiple domains.

His previous leadership positions in North America, Asia and Latin America enhanced his global point of view. His work appears regularly in non-fiction works and textbooks as well as several publications including Forbes. He speaks frequently at conferences and events around the world.

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